Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Giuliani Speaks Truth to Power

At a Republican dinner event last week, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani spoke the bold truth, something to which the progressive media and politicians of all stripes are unaccustomed, and the media pushback was swift and harsh. “I do not believe that the president loves America,” said Giuliani, something that has been obvious to many of us ever since Barack Obama hit the campaign trail prior to his first election. But this kind of blunt speech about the leftist Messiah simply isn’t tolerated, and so the media pounced.

Giuliani was expressing his frustration that Obama doesn’t praise America like even other Democrat presidents like Kennedy and Clinton have done; instead, he constantly criticizes, constantly apologizes. Giuliani blamed this partly on Obama’s unusual upbringing, echoing Dinesh D’Souza’s view of Obama as a man suffused with anti-colonialist animus.

Leftists commonly disdain patriotism as right-wing jingoism until they have their own love of country questioned by the right. They immediately lashed out to paint the 71-year-old Giuliani as a pathetic, racist nut. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest expressed pity for him: “It’s sad to see when somebody who has attained a certain stature and even admiration tarnishes that legacy so thoroughly.” CNN political commentator Errol Louis called Giuliani’s remarks “ugly, thoughtless, and divisive.” Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson declared the former mayor’s attitude “racist” and “kind of unhinged.” “If Giuliani’s Obama Smear Wasn’t Racist,” read Jonathan Chait’s headline in New York Magazine, “What Was it?” Giuliani is a “deranged” race-baiter, wrote the angry lunatics at Salon.com.

Even a surprisingly combative Megyn Kelly at Fox News took Giuliani to task for the remark and asked him if he planned to apologize, but he felt that his opinion was “perfectly reasonable” and worth repeating: “If we look at [Obama’s] rhetoric, he has not displayed the kind of love of America… the exceptionalism that other American presidents have displayed. That he has gone abroad and criticized us over and over again, apologized for us. Every time he does it embarrasses me.”

“This is an American president I’ve never seen before,” Giuliani concluded. None of us has seen a president like this before, because Giuliani is correct: Obama is of a different order from previous presidents. He is not merely an awful Democrat president like Jimmy Carter; he is the culmination of the radical left’s movement to dismantle America as we know it and rebuild it according to their vision of a social justice utopia. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said of Giuliani’s remarks that it’s fine to disagree with Obama, “but let’s agree on one thing: he loves this country.” But does he?

In a different interview, Giuliani pointed out that Obama has been deeply influenced by three notably anti-American mentors: communist Frank Marshall Davis, radical strategist Saul Alinsky, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. “[Obama] was educated by people who were critics of the U.S.,” said Giuliani, putting it mildly. “And he has not been able to overcome those influences.” Obama has not overcome them because he hasn’t tried; he has embraced those influences. Could it be said of those men that they loved America?

You can love this country and still want it to be better than it is. Patriots can agree that there are many ways we could improve upon its greatness – but the fundamental transformation that Barack Obama has always promised is not an improvement; it is a radical re-envisioning. It requires ditching America’s core qualities and starting from scratch – a page one rewrite, as we say in the screenwriting biz. That’s not loving your country – it’s loving the idea of replacing it with a different one.

Obama doesn’t celebrate American exceptionalism. He proclaimed early on that he intended to recreate this nation into something that, to paraphrase his wife, he can be proud of for the first time in his life. Everything he has done since his first election demonstrates his dissatisfaction with – or even a contempt for – the traditional America that patriots know and love.

He has done everything in his power to knock this country off its superpower pedestal. He alienates America’s allies and empowers its enemies, including poisoning our relationship with Israel and bringing the Muslim Brotherhood into the White House. He has opened the floodgates of our borders. He has no respect for the Constitution or its constraints on his power. He is overloading the economy. He is the most divisive American president in living memory, if not in history, and that includes the despised George W. Bush. Are these the actions and policies and character of a man who loves this country?

Rudy Giuliani said he won’t recant unless he hears the president praise American exceptionalism and admit that Islamic fundamentalism is our enemy. I think we all know what the likelihood of that is. Nonetheless, “somebody has to raise these issues with the president,” Giuliani said. “Somebody has to have the courage to stand up.” Indeed, but few politicians or hopefuls on the right have that courage. DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz called on Republican leaders to repudiate Giuliani’s statement, suggesting that bigotry was behind it, and indeed, prominent figures on the right were lukewarm at best in their defense of the former mayor. Governor Bobby Jindal more or less stood with him, but Governor Scott Walker refused to comment on Obama’s feelings for the country. Senator Marco Rubio said he has no doubt that Obama loves America, “but I just think his policies are bad for our nation.”

Obama’s policies are bad for our nation, precisely because he doesn’t love the United States, at least not in its current form.